Most Android smartphones contain a hardware FM radio receiver that’s bundled with radios such as Bluetooth and WiFi. But for the US market, they’re often disabled. It’s been the case many times where the international version of a device had an FM radio but the US version didn’t. AT&T is going to fix that.

The carrier is requesting that all Android devices in its lineup feature a functioning FM radio by 2016. Music streaming services with tailored online radio stations are dominating and radio isn’t exactly people’s choice in music listening these days, but it could be critical in a disaster, where FM radio might be your only source of news when cellular and TV networks are down.

In the end, it’s an extra addition that won’t hurt but may help, so good on AT&T. What are your thoughts on this story? Leave a comment!

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Google Translate is by far the best translator I’ve ever used. The Russian language is difficult to master for translators, and I’m not saying that Google Translate does it well, but it does Russian better than anything else by far. It also includes the awesome feature of instant translation using the camera.

With the latest update, 20 languages were added to the live photo translation feature. They are Bulgarian, Catalan, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Filipino, Finnish, Hungarian, Indonesian, Lithuanian, Norwegian, Polish, Romanian, Slovak, Swedish, Turkish and Ukrainian. That brings the number of languages from 7 to 25, with Hindi and Thai only supporting one way translations on top of that.

Additionally, voice translations are now faster and smoother, even on slow networks. This should really help those traveling abroad. This update should be available to both Android and iOS users over the next few days so keep an eye out!

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Oftentimes, updates to apps are very minor. Bug fixes, little visual changes, nothing to write a changelog about. But thankfully, people keep a sharp eye out for the cool little visual changes that happen in some apps. The latest Play Store update to version 5.8 adds a cool new animation to the hamburger button.

As you can see in the video above, the hamburger button flips into an arrow like it does in other cars. But when the top bar is hidden when scrolled down, these buttons fade or slide out of the way. It’s these touches of refinement that makes Android more of a pleasure to use. What do you think of them?

Source: +Kirill Grouchnikov (2) (3)

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There are plenty of different messaging applications out there, with even more coming down the pipeline, and now Yahoo is getting into the mix, too.

The company has unveiled Livetext, a brand new way for people to get in touch with folks, but with a bit of a twist to the norm. While some messaging platforms have a focus on video and others, text, Livetext bridges the gap between the two and provides users with a live video of the person they’re talking with, but with the conversation still primarily focused on text entry.

That’s right. With Livetext, there’s a real-time video feed that shows the reactions of what’s being said in text, but there’s no audio. The videos are completely silent, and communication, outside sign language and hand signals, is still left to texting. There’s a video below that shows it all works.

There’s no sharing of video or pictures, and the conversation that you’re having with someone in the moment is all there is. Once you’ve finished, it’ll be deleted.

Livetext is available in Ireland, Taiwan and Hong Kong right now. It’ll be available for Android (and iOS) in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, France and Canada beginning Thursday, July 30.

What do you think of the idea?

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